Coming to CES 2014: Wearables and More Wearables

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s biggest annual tech-gadget party, is going to be crawling with “smart” doodads that attach to your wrist, face or some other body part (like feet).

The Galaxy Gear

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Smartwatches and attachable fitness trackers are everywhere already: Fitbit, Kiwi, Qualcomm’s Toq and, of course, Galaxy Gear. Pebble is inviting people to see “something special” at CES. As far as technology for your face, Google Glass is the king of coverage, even if the headset is still only in “alpha” testing, but competitors lurk – one coming from out of our sci-fi dreams to show smart contact lenses at the Las Vegas show.

Do any of these names sound familiar? Indeed. And that’s what scares me about the incoming class of smartwatches, if not all wearables: If industry heavyweights like Samsung and Sony can’t figure out mini-computers that strap to our wrists, then how can we expect success from a no-name Hong Kong brand like Cookoo, or even Kronoz with its fancy Swiss pedigree?

To be fair, it’s the little guys that usually do the disrupting. Real innovation is as likely, or more likely, to come from an unknown problem solver than a tech heavyweight with a giant balance sheet.

The challenge is finding out what why people would want a computer on their wrists — how to communicate without talking literally to the hand, for example. Maybe it seamlessly works with a tiny earbud. Maybe it is finally cracking the nut of 100% accurate voice technology for creating emails and documents. Maybe it is something bigger (or simpler).

At TechCrunch, Darrell Etherington just throws down the gauntlet. People don’t just want new devices because they exist. “Prove there is tech I want to wear,” his headline demands.

If 2014 is indeed the year of wearables — that’s up for debate — the CES show will be a good kicking off point.